Army: PKK abducts 2 Turkish soldiers

Suspected militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) abducted two Turkish soldiers in eastern Turkey amid a flare-up of violence between Kurdish rebels and security forces, the army said Saturday.

The militants seized the soldiers late Friday after stopping a passenger bus on a highway between the Tunceli and Erzincan provinces, the army's high command said in a statement on its website.

An operation was under way to find the soldiers, who were off-duty when they were kidnapped, it added.

Abductions by the PKK are relatively common and usually end peacefully.

There were no further details about the situation of the soldiers, but the Hurriyet newspaper said on its website that the two conscripts were taken by the rebels into the nearby mountains of the Pulumur region.

The Turkish government has been waging a relentless offensive against strongholds of the PKK in the southeast of the country and in neighbouring northern Iraq.

In response the PKK -- blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the international community -- has hit back hard, killing dozens of police and soldiers in almost daily bomb and gunfire attacks.

More than 150 soldiers and police have been killed in attacks since July blamed on the PKK.

The government, for its part, claims to have killed more than a thousand rebels -- figures that have been treated with scepticism in the independent media.

The renewed violence shattered a two-year ceasefire which had stoked hopes of an end to the PKK's three-decade insurgency, in which more than 40,000 people have died.

Source: AFP